Acting I

Course Description

TPP1110 – Acting I is the introductory studio course in acting, taken by theatre majors as the foundation of their training and by non-majors as an elective. Institutions title it Acting 1 and Acting I. It assumes no performance experience.

The course's premise is that acting is doing, not feeling — that a performer's job is to pursue an objective against an obstacle in relationship with another character, and that emotion is a by-product of that pursuit rather than something to be manufactured. Students who arrive expecting to be taught how to cry on cue generally discover the training runs the other way.

Content covers the actor's instrument — body, voice, and imagination, and the warm-up and conditioning that support them; relaxation and concentration; observation and sense memory; improvisation — spontaneity, acceptance, and building on an offer; given circumstances — who, where, when, and what is at stake; objectives, obstacles, and tactics, which form the analytical spine of the course; actions — playable transitive verbs rather than adjectives or moods; beats and scoring a scene; listening and responding, which most beginners underestimate; script analysis for the actor; character development; monologue and scene work; rehearsal process and working with a partner; stage terminology and basic blocking; and critique — giving and receiving response to performed work.

Assessment is by performance: prepared monologues and partnered scenes, presented for the class and critiqued.

Offered at approximately 12 Florida institutions.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Apply relaxation, breathing, and concentration techniques to prepare for performance.
• Use the body and voice with increased awareness, flexibility, and control.
• Participate in improvisation with spontaneity, acceptance, and commitment.
• Identify the given circumstances of a scene from the text.
• Determine a character's objective and identify the obstacles opposing it.
• Select playable tactics and express them as transitive action verbs.
• Divide a scene into beats and score it for performance.
• Listen and respond truthfully to a scene partner rather than anticipating cues.
• Analyze a script for character, relationship, and dramatic action.
• Develop a character grounded in textual evidence rather than assumption.
• Memorize and perform a monologue with clear intention.
• Rehearse and perform a partnered scene.
• Use stage terminology and execute basic blocking accurately.
• Sustain vocal projection and articulation appropriate to a performance space.
• Give specific, constructive critique of a classmate's performed work.
• Receive and apply direction and critique to revise a performance.
• Demonstrate professional rehearsal discipline including preparation and punctuality.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe major acting methodologies and their historical development.
• Perform a scene from a heightened or verse text.
• Prepare audition material and describe audition practice.
• Describe acting for camera and how it differs from stage work.
• Describe dialect and accent work at an introductory level.
• Describe the actor's professional path and industry structure.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The actor's instrument — body, voice, imagination, and conditioning.
• Relaxation and concentration — managing tension and focus.
• Observation and sense memory — drawing on lived experience.
• Improvisation — acceptance, offers, spontaneity, and ensemble.
• Given circumstances — the world of the play and the character's situation.
• Objectives and obstacles — what the character wants and what prevents it.
• Actions and tactics — playable verbs and shifting strategy.
• Beats — dividing and scoring a scene.
• Listening and responding — genuine reaction versus anticipation.
• Script analysis — reading for action, relationship, and subtext.
• Character work — building from text, physicality, and point of view.
• Monologue preparation — selection, analysis, and performance.
• Scene work — partnering, rehearsal, and presentation.
• Stage technique — terminology, blocking, cheating out, and focus.
• Voice and articulation — projection, clarity, and vocal health.
• Critique — description, analysis, and constructive response.
• Rehearsal discipline — preparation, memorization, and professional conduct.

Optional Topics

• Acting methodologies and their history.
• Heightened and verse text.
• Audition technique.
• Acting for camera.
• Dialects and accents.
• Professional practice and industry structure.

Resources & Tools

• Respect for Acting (Uta Hagen) — among the most widely assigned and unusually direct on the actor's practical problems.
• Acting One (Robert Cohen), McGraw Hill — a common textbook built around the objective-obstacle-tactic framework.
• An Actor Prepares or An Actor's Work (Stanislavski) — the source of most of what the course teaches; excerpts are often assigned.
• Audition (Michael Shurtleff) — practical and widely read, particularly on scene analysis.
• Play scripts and monologue anthologies — the working material; many classic texts are public domain and free.
• Rehearsal space — outside-class rehearsal with a partner is required, and space is a real constraint; book early.
• Video recording — a phone is sufficient; watching your own work reveals habits invisible from inside a performance.
• Comfortable movement clothing — the course involves physical work on the floor.

Career Pathways

• Actor (SOC 27-2011) — predominantly freelance and highly competitive.
• Theme park entertainment performer — Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando are among the largest employers of live performers in the country, and character and show performance is a genuine Florida career.
• Cruise line entertainment — Miami and Port Canaveral homeport a substantial share of the industry.
• Voice-over and commercial work.
• Drama Teacher (SOC 25-2031) — requiring Florida certification.
• Standardized Patient — health science programs hire trained performers to simulate patients; a steady side income in Florida's many medical programs.
• Corporate training, presentation coaching, and public speaking — where the communication skills transfer directly.
• Any field requiring presence — teaching, sales, law, and ministry all draw on the same skills.

Special Information

⚠ Florida carries introductory acting under two different SCNS numbers

This is a genuine transfer trap, and it is easy to miss because the titles are nearly identical. Florida institutions carry introductory acting as both:

Both are 3-credit introductory acting courses covering substantially the same ground, and FIU carries both. But SCNS equivalency applies to the same number at the same level, never across numbers, so a receiving program that lists TPP2100 is not automatically satisfied by TPP1110. Students planning to transfer into a theatre program — or to use the course as a prerequisite for directing (TPP2300C) — should confirm which number the receiving institution requires before enrolling.

Acting is doing, not feeling — and that is the whole method

The most common beginner error is trying to produce an emotion directly: deciding a character is sad and attempting to feel sad. It does not work, and it looks false. The training substitutes a mechanism that does work — identify what the character wants, identify what stands in the way, and pursue the want through specific tactics against a partner who is pursuing their own. Emotion arises from that pursuit. Students who genuinely adopt this framework improve quickly; those who keep reaching for feelings plateau.

Listening is the skill that separates beginners from everyone else

New actors rehearse their own lines and wait for cues, which produces two people delivering monologues at each other. Experienced actors listen to what their partner actually just did — which varies from performance to performance — and respond to that. It is the most-noted correction in any beginning acting class and the one that most improves work when taken seriously.

The course requires outside rehearsal, and that is the scheduling problem

Scene work is rehearsed with a partner outside class hours. Partners have their own schedules, rehearsal space is limited and must be booked, and a scene that has been run twice looks like a scene that has been run twice. Students who set a rehearsal calendar in the first week and hold to it do markedly better, and this is the same logistical failure mode that affects directing and dance composition courses.

Vulnerability is part of the work, and the room's conduct matters

Acting requires performing in front of peers and being critiqued, which is uncomfortable at first for nearly everyone. The conventions that make it workable are worth stating: critique addresses the work rather than the person, effort is respected regardless of outcome, and what a classmate reveals in an exercise stays in the room. Students should also know that contemporary practice includes consent-based boundaries for physical contact in scenes, and that any staged intimacy or violence should be choreographed rather than improvised. A student uncomfortable with specific content or contact should say so to the instructor; that is a professional norm now, not an accommodation.

Non-majors are welcome and often benefit most

The course assumes no experience and is commonly taken as a humanities elective. Students in fields requiring presence and communication — education, law, sales, ministry, healthcare — frequently report it as the most practically useful elective they took, because the training in listening, physical presence, and speaking with intention transfers directly.

Sequence and related courses

TPP1110 leads to TPP1111 or TPP2110 (Acting II) depending on institution, and is the usual prerequisite for TPP2300C (Directing I). It is distinct from THE1000 Theatre Appreciation, which is a non-performance survey and does not substitute for it in either direction.